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I fucking hate tomestones but there are a lot of bad players in this game and some are casual and want free gear. Let's not take that away from them if they enjoy it. I'd love to see questlines where you demonstrate skill for gear besides savage and no that doesn't mean you get to afk in a 24 man raid for a free gear drop.

.....Tomestones coming back sucks and no changes is probably why I'm not going to last on a full sub this expansion though. No chance in hell if it's not innovative stuff.

Suffering From Success

If you don't let people gear up without effort, you're excluding a large part of the game population.

And that's not viable. What people should do now to prepare for the expansion? People that came back in preparation for stormblood?

You want people to play one month for the story and drop the game since they will never be able to face other content?

Considering how is the battle system and raid design, ilvl is key and most people dosn't have the time or they will to face an excruciating escalation of endgame content so the low percentage of people that have the time and will to do it can be happy.

Sadly this in no GW where gear was irrelevant and it capped at lvl 20.

Tomestones is a necessary evil born from the same nature of the game itself.

The population that wants all the rewards without putting in any effort because they're conditioned by the game that they're entitled to it? Would be better off without those. Right now there's nothing to do at all to prepare for expansion as you'll have free entry gear dispensed by quests or vendors right away. Getting 270 is nothing but vanity at this point. People should be able to face other content. I'm not saying take everything away. But there should be a meaningful progression. Tomestones should be a catchup mechanic, not the primary gearing method. i.e. it should only be able to bring you up to the baseline level of the tier. i250 already allows you to do EVERY piece of content in the game, including raids. Previously you had to get better gear to do raids but dungeons, storyline and all that was still available to even the most casual players. If people want to log in for two-three hours a month and be able to do everything, well that's impossible I'm sorry to say. You're supposed to put effort to get better at the game. You're supposed to put int time and effort to progress. Otherwise what's even the point of the game at all? Just roll cutscenes. I'm not demanding something outrageous like having no ways to gear up at all. But it should come from content, not from tomestone wage. It would make a possibility of scaling harder dungeons rewarding that gear. It would make it possible so Diadem-like content can drop relevant gear. It would even make 24-man raiding relevant, which it hasn't been, not direclty, since the beginning of the game. Let people catch up to the level required by the storyline and casual content, i.e. previous tier. But allowing people to get next-to-best gear for basically no effort just because they showed up? That's ridiculous. Trust me, even casuals appreciate when there's something to work towards. How is the current model satisfying for anybody? You toil away in dungeons you can do while watching Netflix (and some do because it's so unstimulating) and you just get the best gear, piece by piece. There's no attachment or sense of achievement. Bad players deserve different types of content (story quests, fishing, gold saucer, house building). They don't deserve good gear at the time of its relevancy however.
Otherwise you're running a risk that the only people still playing will be those entitled OF kids that can't do anything but cry ME! NOW! at the top of their lungs.

Member

Relic progression is trash and still trash, not sure how that's an argument for relieving drop RNG.

....

I worked for an entire patch on getting Wrangler set, and when I got it, I could look fondly on it. If it just fell into my lap after one clear, well, I'd just stick it on retainer and not have any memories associated with it.

These are essentially the same thing; relic is largely up-front about how much of your time it's going to waste, while RNG loot may take forever or no time at all. Both are substituting boring repetition for actual content; both suck. Literally the thing you like about Wrangler and your grind for the healer chest are what people defend about the relic grind--that you spend forever working towards something low-skill and the timesink makes it feel earned.

On that note, I want tomestones gone. There's no goddamn way it's okay to have people outgear all current content by doing braindead dungeons.
Existence of tomestone gear as a viable method of most relevant gear progression basically kills any chance all other content is rewarding.
Yoshida often muses in public about how it's so hard to assign the proper rewards to harder content people are asking for (specifically for light party, for instance) but hey, the problem is right there.
Stop letting people gear up with no effort.

Solving the problem by essentially breaking progression for the vast majority of the game's population is questionable. The tick/tock of tomestone gear and poverty twine each cycle guarantees a consistent and reliable path forward for the casual majority of the player base. Keeping each capped puts a limit on how quickly these people can gear up, but it also lets them know they will be able to consistently move forward. Tome gear is also vital to the sliding scale of raid difficulty they have going--can't beat thing at 250? Well, start adding 260 pieces. Still can't? Poverty upgrade item time! 270 not enough? Bring on the echo! The only impact letting casual overgear dungeons and eventually EX Primals and raids has is making random DF experiences moderately less painful.

This is something that we're best served by the game keeping, because having that cycle in place expands the potential audience for 'hard' content over time. The solve for difficult content rewards needs to be something outside the vertical iLevel gearing structure so that the content has a chance to live beyond the next iLevel bump; the solution is not randomly carving chunks out of the casual gear progression for no real net gain.

I kind of wish FFXIV would take another page out of the WoW book, similar to the garrison implementations and what sounds like an upcoming personal loot option, and consider nerfing raid mount/minion drop rates when they add echo. Incentivize clearing it pre-echo by making the mounts guaranteed drops at the time, but once echo kicks in and the lockout goes off, raid mount farming functions like bird farming. You'll maybe see it, you maybe won't. It's not removed from the game, but it's a lot easier to get if you clear while relevant.

Suffering From Success

These are essentially the same thing; relic is largely up-front about how much of your time it's going to waste, while RNG loot may take forever or no time at all. Both are substituting boring repetition for actual content; both suck. Literally the thing you like about Wrangler and your grind for the healer chest are what people defend about the relic grind--that you spend forever working towards something low-skill and the timesink makes it feel earned.

Solving the problem by essentially breaking progression for the vast majority of the game's population is questionable. The tick/tock of tomestone gear and poverty twine each cycle guarantees a consistent and reliable path forward for the casual majority of the player base. Keeping each capped puts a limit on how quickly these people can gear up, but it also lets them know they will be able to consistently move forward. Tome gear is also vital to the sliding scale of raid difficulty they have going--can't beat thing at 250? Well, start adding 260 pieces. Still can't? Poverty upgrade item time! 270 not enough? Bring on the echo! The only impact letting casual overgear dungeons and eventually EX Primals and raids has is making random DF experiences moderately less painful.

This is something that we're best served by the game keeping, because having that cycle in place expands the potential audience for 'hard' content over time. The solve for difficult content rewards needs to be something outside the vertical iLevel gearing structure so that the content has a chance to live beyond the next iLevel bump; the solution is not randomly carving chunks out of the casual gear progression for no real net gain.

Let's be real here, people play to see that number tick up. If you keep this poverty gear cycle in, there's just no way to motivate people to do harder stuff.
Look at Gold Saucer. Some people don't even bother because it's so far outside primary character progression.
Look at EX primals? Why are they all rewarding nothing but weapons? Often outdated ones? Is that because all the gear progression is already taken up by "expert" dungeons?
Casual gear progression needs to be behind. Not "haha you'll get your twines next week", but a tier behind.

Is placating casuals with handouts really that much more important than the fact that almost half the content you release rewards NOTHING of value?
Why do dungeons not actually reward any useful gear? Maybe gearing through dungeons could be an option for casuals?
What about FATEs? Why are they so useless to levelcapped players? Maybe make them reward catchup gear from time to time?

And it's not so much that tomestone gearing covers so much ground it makes the rest of the game pointless, it's that... how boring it is. For everyone.
Yeah, at this point people are used to welfare (gee, what a social phenomenon, who could've seen that coming), but it's like digging it deeper and deeper the more you keep this system.

I kind of wish FFXIV would take another page out of the WoW book, similar to the garrison implementations and what sounds like an upcoming personal loot option, and consider nerfing raid mount/minion drop rates when they add echo. Incentivize clearing it pre-echo by making the mounts guaranteed drops at the time, but once echo kicks in and the lockout goes off, raid mount farming functions like bird farming. You'll maybe see it, you maybe won't. It's not removed from the game, but it's a lot easier to get if you clear while relevant.

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Member

The wife and I hit 21 this evening, and boy are we hooked. The 3 dungeons we've done are so much fun, and I think are very nicely designed for noobie dungeons. And the people we have run with have been so nice to us.

It is a bit overwhelming now that we've unlocked all 3 cities, all the professions are now open and the option to level other classes. There is so much to do, sometimes we just pause and try to plan out what we're going to do over the next hour. I keep trying to focus on 1 or 2 professions, but I inevitably do everything heh.

What is the recommended database style site for FFXIV? Something like what Wowhead is to World of Warcraft.

Member

this is what's already going on though, the tome gear upgrade items drop in the 24 man alliance raid 1 patch after savage raid is unlocked
unless you want them to start dropping after 2 patches, but that's kinda extreme, this game caters to casuals more than hardcore after all

The wife and I hit 21 this evening, and boy are we hooked. The 3 dungeons we've done are so much fun, and I think are very nicely designed for noobie dungeons. And the people we have run with have been so nice to us.

It is a bit overwhelming now that we've unlocked all 3 cities, all the professions are now open and the option to level other classes. There is so much to do, sometimes we just pause and try to plan out what we're going to do over the next hour. I keep trying to focus on 1 or 2 professions, but I inevitably do everything heh.

What is the recommended database style site for FFXIV? Something like what Wowhead is to World of Warcraft.

The problem is that in both cases, most of your time is being spent doing something you wouldn't do for its own merits. That's the problem--glamour gear grinding or relic, it's essentially doing video game chores. There's less pressure on the reward when the act itself is rewarding; dungeon grinding isn't, and anything that forces it is essentially demanding players invest significant time in something unfun. It's part of why I like the last quarter of PotD--it's doing something actually involving, and then the accursed hoard stuff functions as a lotto mini game after clearing a set of floors. There's no real relation to inflating iLevel, and it's not a thing you do to raise a number, it's just something worth doing.

It's also what I kind of like about Aquapolis--glamour gear mats, crafting mats, housing items, and a level sync that keeps you from too much power creep. 8 people is too many, but the lovely thing about Aquapolis is that it doesn't try to force you to take extra people, so you can just dip in with a buddy and lottery it up.

Neither fits into progression, but both work pretty well because they've managed to define an identity and a reward system that isn't automatically irrelevant at the next iLevel bump.

Let's be real here, people play to see that number tick up. If you keep this poverty gear cycle in, there's just no way to motivate people to do harder stuff.
Look at Gold Saucer. Some people don't even bother because it's so far outside primary character progression.
Look at EX primals? Why are they all rewarding nothing but weapons? Often outdated ones? Is that because all the gear progression is already taken up by "expert" dungeons?
Casual gear progression needs to be behind. Not "haha you'll get your twines next week", but a tier behind.

I think we're talking about doing harder stuff from different perspectives--there absolutely are people that only dip into the Savage stuff after it's had echo, or only feel comfortable trying once they've geared up enough. I'm not expecting casual players to suddenly want to raid progression, just saying that the gearing up and echo stuff will eventually get them to a place where they'll feel comfortable trying content that everyone else has already moved on from. People who aren't going to set foot in Savage to try and get an upgrade item pre-catchup patch aren't going to suddenly start raiding; they're already choosing to sacrifice and delay iLevel increasing a while. Savage SCoB is an interesting example; they screwed up by putting it on shared loot lockout with normal mode, but they did get some early takers. They later got another tier of people trying overgeared at i130, and at this point casual players are running through massively overpowered for their titles. Savage SCoB isn't really challenging anymore, but it is something that's had a remarkably long tail because it rewards something that isn't rendered obsolete even though all the gear involved has been surpassed. And that's what I want them to focus on--if they can release something I enjoy for the challenge today, and other people will take on once the challenge has been outpaced later, it's a win because I get what I want and the content will eventually be seen by a wider audience then would ever want to prog.

EX Primals should be rewarding accessories--the weapon only thing is dumb, but understandable to the extent that they clearly want to let everyone reset and instal-catchup at the start of every raid tier. They shamelessly use the birds as bonus incentive once the weapons are obsolete, and it's worth noting that it is incredibly effective. There are always bird farms. There are still pony farms. Somehow.

I guess I should also note poverty gear was a huge component of my eventual starting raiding. Specifically that I could gear up to a point where I could drop into a new thing to sub for somebody and not be total dead weight (because I was garbage at the time, but at least I was garbage with an acceptable amount of HP); the barrier to entry for newer players will get higher without tome gear or some equivalent putting them on equal enough footing they can contribute without having to dive all-in on raiding prep. Them having current-ish gear costs me nothing, makes my random EXDRs or normal runs go faster, and I guess makes them happy.

Is placating casuals with handouts really that much more important than the fact that almost half the content you release rewards NOTHING of value?
Why do dungeons not actually reward any useful gear? Maybe gearing through dungeons could be an option for casuals?
What about FATEs? Why are they so useless to levelcapped players? Maybe make them reward catchup gear from time to time?

On the first thing, probably? Just from a monetary perspective, it'd probably hurt them more to piss off casuals.

But none of that is an inherent problem with tomestone gear existing. They have all the freedom in the world to rework how gear tiers are distributed, and it's not tomestones limiting the dungeon gear iLevel. If anything, it's crafted and the normal raid tier gear that's forcing dungeon gear to irrelevance. If they moved Creator normal and crafted to 255, it'd have freed up 250 for dungeon gear which would have filled the cheap uncapped slot. Them intentionally having dungeon drops be so low isn't because tomestones exist. And even if they did reward useful gear? It's literally the same exact content many people are doing to get tomes anyway; there's nothing new to do there, there's no real difference between buying with tomes to do them besides lolRNG and forcing everybody to play the same way (you WILL run exdr for gear, no questions!)

Suffering From Success

I don't think you understand. I'm not trying to take away all gear from everybody who doesn't do Savage. I'm arguing however that it would be more healthy for the game if higher level gear was obtainable in that elusive midcore content rather than straight up purchased with wage tomes. What's the difference between earning drops and buying whatever you want? The latter is boring. There's no surprise, no decisions based on changing situations.

I also don't really subscribe to the idea that if you put rewards on a slightly higher shelf, people would just start dropping the game en masse. This problem goes both ways - lack of stimulating content makes people drop the game just as well and if nothing ever challenges anyone even a little then the community simply won't grow. People came to expect that good man Yoshida will eventually come down and put the food in their mouth. I was pleasantly surprised that Final Steps was never changed at all. It's not that hard but boy oh boy was it a big whoop for the playerbase of this game that's used to Netflixing their way through everything.

I mean, there was a drop in retainment with Heavensward right?
Is it because of changes in raiding content? Well, that can't be right because as I'm told repeatedly raiding population is just a minority.

What I want is a smoother, more interesting curve specifically for midcore players and I think giving handouts to vain bads is actively hurting the prospects of this.

Obviously EXDR as it is can't reward equivalent gear. What it drops (outdated garbage) is about right for its difficulty.
But it could open the way for an Expert+ version of those dungeons where you could get a 260 piece a week or something like that by completing the dungeon under challenge conditions.
Doesn't have to be too hard. Just do something, anything to break up the tedium.

Member

Perhaps, but a certain amount of gambling is necessary for these types of games. It makes them both frustrating but also satisfying.
If you have a clear bar to fill it's the same... but not the same.

Let's be real here, people play to see that number tick up. If you keep this poverty gear cycle in, there's just no way to motivate people to do harder stuff.
Look at Gold Saucer. Some people don't even bother because it's so far outside primary character progression.
Look at EX primals? Why are they all rewarding nothing but weapons? Often outdated ones? Is that because all the gear progression is already taken up by "expert" dungeons?
Casual gear progression needs to be behind. Not "haha you'll get your twines next week", but a tier behind.

Is placating casuals with handouts really that much more important than the fact that almost half the content you release rewards NOTHING of value?
Why do dungeons not actually reward any useful gear? Maybe gearing through dungeons could be an option for casuals?
What about FATEs? Why are they so useless to levelcapped players? Maybe make them reward catchup gear from time to time?

And it's not so much that tomestone gearing covers so much ground it makes the rest of the game pointless, it's that... how boring it is. For everyone.
Yeah, at this point people are used to welfare (gee, what a social phenomenon, who could've seen that coming), but it's like digging it deeper and deeper the more you keep this system.

Seriously, an overhauled gearing system could revitalise so many aspects of this game. If you had gear that you could customise with runes or stuff like that and you could put those all over the game. Even small bumps would incentivise people to seek it out in order to build the perfect gear set. Clearing an ex primal to get a weapon isnt much of an incentive when that weapon has such a short shelf life.

I do often think how great this game would be with an actually good gearing system but Ive kind of given up on that ever happening. Glamour as a reward for clearing content should not be as much of a thing as it is in this game.

Member

I just disagree that slapping an RNG gate on what used to be tome gear is actually fixing anything. The short lifespan of content in FFXIV is a problem, but relocating the tome gear won't fix it. Crafted gear and primal weapons hit a hard reset every tier; all adding a layer of RNG to tome gear does is make acquiring the gear more annoying. It doesn't change the reset, it doesn't make the content inherently more fun, and in fact ultimately makes things less rewarding over time as the more pieces you acquire the more likely you are to get a dup drop.

If Creator is indicative of raid difficulty going forward, they've got midcore covered. The stuff to do vaccuum in 3.4-3.5 has been in really difficult content; Savage slots perfectly with EX Primals now. They've talked about serving Really Hard stuff in off-patches, but If they want to fix things going forward, the focus should be on ways to make it rewarding longer-term, not doubling down on RNG in the existing system.

If they want to meaningfully rework gearing, it needs to be a ground up effort with a coherent path forward for everyone, not just blocking out whoever is deemed undeserving. Casuals are arguably the only group with the most consistent stream of stuff to do; blowing that up needs to be part of a larger change, not just a move to make gear more exclusive with no larger rebalance.

Member

No clue on when the embargo's up, but reseph and hezkezl (the creator of the XI and XIV subreddits and one of the gamerescape guys) suggested there'd be something really cool in the coming live letter, and both reseph and gamerescape were present at this stop.

Suffering From Success

I just disagree that slapping an RNG gate on what used to be tome gear is actually fixing anything. The short lifespan of content in FFXIV is a problem, but relocating the tome gear won't fix it. Crafted gear and primal weapons hit a hard reset every tier; all adding a layer of RNG to tome gear does is make acquiring the gear more annoying. It doesn't change the reset, it doesn't make the content inherently more fun, and in fact ultimately makes things less rewarding over time as the more pieces you acquire the more likely you are to get a dup drop.

If Creator is indicative of raid difficulty going forward, they've got midcore covered. The stuff to do vaccuum in 3.4-3.5 has been in really difficult content; Savage slots perfectly with EX Primals now. They've talked about serving Really Hard stuff in off-patches, but If they want to fix things going forward, the focus should be on ways to make it rewarding longer-term, not doubling down on RNG in the existing system.

If they want to meaningfully rework gearing, it needs to be a ground up effort with a coherent path forward for everyone, not just blocking out whoever is deemed undeserving. Casuals are arguably the only group with the most consistent stream of stuff to do; blowing that up needs to be part of a larger change, not just a move to make gear more exclusive with no larger rebalance.

I think you're struggling to think outside the box on this one.
Yeah, everything would have to be rebalanced. But it's needed because I don't wanna hear Yoshida making excuses of not being able to come up with rewards ever again when in the same breath they say that they're satisfied with what they have now because OF posters don't complain. Too much.

And Creator was like... 3 fights. I'm not gonna count the freebie of A9S because that's just straight up a gift boss. A necessary thing in raid design but with only 4 bosses in the tier (6 if you count Extreme primals) it's kind of a bummer.

Banned

As I said before, GTAV has way more going on in terms of the water physics and you can actually swim & drive boats in that game. I can run that with a stable framerate. This visual effect that SE put on the water shouldn't be bogging my PC down this much.

Member

Which is an entirely different discussion from the epic cart-before-horse of "tomestones need to be removed and the undeserving need to stop having a comparable iLevel for the good of the game!" Because if you're doing a full reboot, there is still room for a currency-based gearset that isn't at the mercy of RNG. There is still room for a gearing path that lets casual players stay in the arena of relevant gear to dip their toes into harder content out of curiosity. If they're going to reboot and retune everything, there are considerably bigger issues to wrangle than the existence of accessible gear or not enough RNG substituting grind for fun.

I've been pretty up-front about my disappointment with Creator, and my resentment for A9S ruining Faust twice. But at the same time I can acknowledge that this is what a largish section of the playerbase is looking for. So, fine. I turn my attention to the mystery hard content in 4.1, because that's a practical thing that can actually happen, and the best thing they could do for that content is give it value that doesn't require the gear treadmill and that is maintained for longer than a raid tier.

The gear cycle they have is functional; they need to address the content side by creating more content, and that doesn't require creating and imposing some sort of arbitrary minimum level of competence for semi-relevant gear. If we're talking about tackling XIV's very real content problem, they should start with actually figuring out how to make the content they do have last longer without becoming completely trivial. I'll point, again, to Aquapolis and PotD. They're not perfect, but they're content that has value outside the gear treadmill. They're designed in a way to counteract iLevel inflation's impact. That's what they need to focus on--if they're creating quality content that people just won't do, then we talk rebooting the rewards. But tomestones aren't the root proble here, they're a reaction to a larger content problem, and replacing them with RNG doesn't fix anything. The one thing the game has more than enough of is repetitive grind.

Member

I just disagree that slapping an RNG gate on what used to be tome gear is actually fixing anything. The short lifespan of content in FFXIV is a problem, but relocating the tome gear won't fix it. Crafted gear and primal weapons hit a hard reset every tier; all adding a layer of RNG to tome gear does is make acquiring the gear more annoying. It doesn't change the reset, it doesn't make the content inherently more fun, and in fact ultimately makes things less rewarding over time as the more pieces you acquire the more likely you are to get a dup drop.

If Creator is indicative of raid difficulty going forward, they've got midcore covered. The stuff to do vaccuum in 3.4-3.5 has been in really difficult content; Savage slots perfectly with EX Primals now. They've talked about serving Really Hard stuff in off-patches, but If they want to fix things going forward, the focus should be on ways to make it rewarding longer-term, not doubling down on RNG in the existing system.

If they want to meaningfully rework gearing, it needs to be a ground up effort with a coherent path forward for everyone, not just blocking out whoever is deemed undeserving. Casuals are arguably the only group with the most consistent stream of stuff to do; blowing that up needs to be part of a larger change, not just a move to make gear more exclusive with no larger rebalance.

The problem is how can they fix this now. The main issue with tomestones is that it basically cripples any kind of interesting content and design which ultimately results in lazy design and content. Let's be real because of tomes we have uninteresting dungeons that are nothing more than straight lines and setup of 3 trash mobs and boss x3 and they can't be long or very challenging because people are expected to farm these over and over so the dungeons become nothing more than uninteresting content.

Even if they wanna keep dungeons that way they at least need to find ways to make the other content not so reliant on tomestones. The new relic was an absolute joke and some of the laziest design ever. It was almost all tomestones this time around and it simply was not fun, not one part of the new relic was fun at all. As much as people wanted to complain about the book phase from the first relic at least it was something different that had variety. Everything about this game is a miserable grind, granted it's an mmo and mmos are mostly grind but at least make it interesting in some way.

POTD is fun content but they gated off the higher floors requiring a pre-made to do it.It took us almost 2 months to get people to run the higher floors and I know so many people who just don't bother cause it's too much of a hassle to coordinate a group for it. Honestly if POTD wasn't so good for leveling then like anything else it would be dead at this point.Diadem is a joke and I don't know what they were thinking with that at this point. That should have been designed around all 3 groups having to work together to get the middle boss area to open instead of hoping you get lucky for the weather to change.Last time I went in the lightning storm was up when I got in and it's like why even bother at that point you aren't gonna get a shot at the boss.

At the end of the day though this game is casual and that simply isn't gonna change because the large majority of players are casual. If I wasn't so invested in my FC and friends I could easily drop this game it's become a massive borefest. I'm moving during Stormblood launch so I guess I will see how it turns out but I still haven't pre-ordered Stormblood yet and right now I don't know if I'm gonna continue on.

Member

Let's be real because of tomes we have uninteresting dungeons that are nothing more than straight lines and setup of 3 trash mobs and boss x3 and they can't be long or very challenging because people are expected to farm these over and over so the dungeons become nothing more than uninteresting content.

What you have described is not a problem with tomes, what you have described is a problem with dungeon design. Replacing tomes with RNG chests doesn't make the dungeons any better/less faceroll; if you're just in there because it's the mandatory upgrade path, it'll always tend towards standard and faceroll. A good way of addressing this is introducing alternate ways to cap--PVP, PotD, maps and Aquapolis, WT, hunts, etc. You fix the problem by giving people more to do and deemphasizing dungeon spam as the One True Path. As with so many things, the problem isn't inherent to tomestones, it's inherent to the ARR cycle we've been stuck with. You fix dungeons by making them interesting again, not by changing them from a guaranteed payout to useless gear or RNG rests. You justify making them interesting by deemphasizing spamming them. You fix dungeons by fixing dungeons, not by scapegoating the concept of currency for gear.

POTD is fun content but they gated off the higher floors requiring a pre-made to do it.It took us almost 2 months to get people to run the higher floors and I know so many people who just don't bother cause it's too much of a hassle to coordinate a group for it. Honestly if POTD wasn't so good for leveling then like anything else it would be dead at this point.

I hit this point a lot, but PotD does not require a full premade. You can solo past 100, and duo to 200. It's some of the most flexible content they've ever made, an amazing way to preview jobs at cap without having I level them to cap, and players choosing to box themselves in to a mandatory 4-man party is their choice, much like people trying to form 8-man groups for WT are making things more complicated than they need to be. It makes it faster and easier, but less interesting. I'd still be all for them allowing random matching to 200, but I stick with it being remarkably well-thouhgt-out. It's flexible content that slots in as an alternative to dungeon spam or EX primals, etc. I didn't expect much from it, but conceptually there is a.crazy amount of potential there.

Diadem is a joke and I don't know what they were thinking with that at this point. That should have been designed around all 3 groups having to work together to get the middle boss area to open instead of hoping you get lucky for the weather to change.Last time I went in the lightning storm was up when I got in and it's like why even bother at that point you aren't gonna get a shot at the boss.

Diadem is trash and a phenomenal example of trying to lure people into content with a shiny RNG gated prize,and it not working because RNG doesn't make boring things not boring and if people don't 'win' enough to justify the boring they're not going to go back.

At this point I'm mostly curious to see what the optional hard content shapes up to be. We know the game has great potential for really solid, challenging fights. If even patches are quick clears and odd patches are something a little more involved, it'll be a tiny step forward for the game. But there are basically zero of my problems that get solved by removing tomes.

Member

What you have described is not a problem with tomes, what you have described is a problem with dungeon design. Replacing tomes with RNG chests doesn't make the dungeons any better/less faceroll; if you're just in there because it's the mandatory upgrade path, it'll always tend towards standard and faceroll. A good way of addressing this is introducing alternate ways to cap--PVP, PotD, maps and Aquapolis, WT, hunts, etc. You fix the problem by giving people more to do and deemphasizing dungeon spam as the One True Path. As with so many things, the problem isn't inherent to tomestones, it's inherent to the ARR cycle we've been stuck with. You fix dungeons by making them interesting again, not by changing them from a guaranteed payout to useless gear or RNG rests. You justify making them interesting by deemphasizing spamming them. You fix dungeons by fixing dungeons, not by scapegoating the concept of currency for gear.

I hit this point a lot, but PotD does not require a full premade. You can solo past 100, and duo to 200. It's some of the most flexible content they've ever made, an amazing way to preview jobs at cap without having I level them to cap, and players choosing to box themselves in to a mandatory 4-man party is their choice, much like people trying to form 8-man groups for WT are making things more complicated than they need to be. It makes it faster and easier, but less interesting. I'd still be all for them allowing random matching to 200, but I stick with it being remarkably well-thouhgt-out. It's flexible content that slots in as an alternative to dungeon spam or EX primals, etc. I didn't expect much from it, but conceptually there is a.crazy amount of potential there.

Diadem is trash and a phenomenal example of trying to lure people into content with a shiny RNG gated prize,and it not working because RNG doesn't make boring things not boring and if people don't 'win' enough to justify the boring they're not going to go back.

At this point I'm mostly curious to see what the optional hard content shapes up to be. We know the game has great potential for really solid, challenging fights. If even patches are quick clears and odd patches are something a little more involved, it'll be a tiny step forward for the game. But there are basically zero of my problems that get solved by removing tomes.

Only way I can see them making dungeons interesting is probably de-emphasizing the the ability to farm them.

Make them take more effort and and increase the reward, but after that queueing for them gives you a much lower normal reward so people will then move onto other content for farming whatever but will still queue for these more difficult dungeons if the daily reward is worth it.

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.

I see no direct relationship between dungeon complexity and tomestones. Dungeon take a long time to complete? Up the tomestones it gives. It's a trivial matter of time:rewards.

What do see as a problem is their unwillingness to tinker with that time:reward ratio, leading to stuff like A1S spam. The community figures out X, which is the optimum way of farming for Y. Rather than change X so that it covers a wider range of content, they do... nothing. It's like they don't see it as a problem that players are doing one thing over and over again and all that matters to player is time-per-run, and this is the bigger issue. It wouldn't be solved by more RNG/less tomestones at all. It's their entire perspective of "how should players spend their time and why would they want to do so" that's off the mark.

Pretty much all the HW dungeons could be changed so that they:

1) Give more tomestone rewards per run
2) Give ilvl scaled gear so they match Baelsar's Wall/Sohm Ai (Hard) after you unlock that tier, but still with the original appearances

And this would cut down on ARF and Gubal (Hard) farming parties but they don't do anything of the sort. It's like once a dungeon is released it's "done forever" and they don't want to touch it ever again. Rather, they bribe people with things like roulette rewards and Wondrous Tails to run these outdated content again.

Banned

I'm not currently subbed but I'll need to come back again at some point to finish catching up the story so I can check. I certainly didn't recall seeing 3D wave effects a couple months ago when I resubbed for a month and I know I would remember if I did.